Free Republic

Is it more evil to hold existing shares of Apple/Google/Facebook/Twitter or to sell them and pay capital gains tax to the Biden Administration?

Since the election DW and I have been bombarded with pleas to donate to various conservative political causes. Don't have an earth-shattering amount to give, but would both like to donate to President Trump's post election efforts, and to the Republican candidates in both Georgia Senate runoffs. What are the legitimate places to donate to these causes? Somehow I have a feeling that many of the senders of various emails and text messages are really scammers. While I have no delusions that our small donations will make much of a difference, just the fact that there are two more donors...

It may well be, if inflicted on a company’s or government agency’s employees... (excerpt only -- read the whole thing)

“With slow wage growth, rising health care premiums, and skyrocketing gas prices across the country, Donald Trump’s reckless policies are hurting millions of hardworking families. Trump and Republicans in Congress have been so determined to undermine workers that they held a Supreme Court seat hostage for nearly a year in order to nominate an aggressively anti-union justice, who became the deciding vote in last week’s disgraceful decision in the Janus case..."

I just read the DNI report and the bottom line is: DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying. However, if we remember Jill Stein's recount, the Michigan results show that there was a second entity which "hacked" the election. The Detroit results, with more votes than voters in 70% of the precincts, show that someone clearly hacked the vote tallying equipment. And, that someone, the hacker, was -- the Democrat party.

The title says it all. Clearly, money given to PACs stays with the PAC, but what about money donated to Hillary's campaign? I think she can keep it if she quits, but could she give it to the new nominee? I can easily foresee months of bickering and indecision while major donors feel fleeced and close their checkbooks.

The State Department said today it can’t find Bryan Pagliano’s emails from the time he served as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s senior information technology staffer during her tenure there.

When the CRU at East Anglia disclosed that it had lost some of the raw temperature data, leaving only the “homogenized” data, some honest commentators expressed the hope that the homogenizing was competently done. Anyone who has been following Climate Audit for the last few years knows that at least some of the adjustments to the raw data done by the major data depositories appear to have been incompetently done at best. The statistical techniques used in the scientific backwater of historical climatology are often ad hoc, bearing little relation to the techniques that are standard in other fields. In...

Derrion Albert, 16, Was Killed In Thursday Attack Caught On Tape ....Silvonus Shannon, 19; Eric Carson, 16; Eugene Riley, 18; and Eugene Bailey, 18, allegedly kicked and punched Derrion, an innocent bystander in a fight between two groups of students near the South Side school Thursday afternoon, according to Cook County prosecutors... The assault, which was captured on videotape, was not gang-related but arose from a disagreement between students who live in Altgeld Gardens and another group who live in an area known as the "Ville," according to Assistant Cook County State's Attorney Jodi Peterson...

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials, in deciding how to handle the lone surviving pirate from the hostage-taking of an American ship captain, must weigh the violence of the suspect's actions against his surprisingly young age.

Journalists who dialed in to a White House conference call Thursday hoping for a media-friendly reception got a far friendlier response than they were counting on...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hackers broke into the Yahoo! e-mail account that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin used for official business as Alaska's governor, revealing as evidence a few inconsequential personal messages she has received since John McCain selected her as his running mate... The Secret Service contacted The Associated Press on Wednesday and asked for copies of the leaked e-mails, which circulated widely on the Internet. The AP did not comply....

The Los Angeles Police Department says one of its officers was shot and wounded by Long Beach police.

ELDORADO, TEXAS -- As officials haggled Friday over how to return more than 400 children to their parents, it was becoming increasingly clear that Texas' audacious attempt to rein in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints had backfired -- and become a lesson in the difficulty of cracking down on the 10,000-member polygamist sect. .... The town also was abuzz over an anticipated mass voter registration by the FLDS. Hours after the court first ruled against the state, two members of the sect walked into the county clerk's office and requested 300 voter registration forms, a...

SAN ANGELO, Texas -- A Texas judge today signed an order that said hundreds of children seized during a raid on a polygamous sect's ranch must immediately be released to their families. Signed by 51st District Judge Barbara Walther, the order provides for parents to retrieve their children from the various foster care facilities where they have been placed beginning today at 8 a.m. and extending through 8 p.m.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama raised $55 million in February, a record for any presidential campaign in a single month, a campaign official said on Thursday. The amount is well above the $36 million the Illinois senator raked in during January and is also much higher than the $35 million raised by his rival Hillary Clinton during February, even though that month marked a record for her fundraising...

It was a record breaking weekend in the limited-release realm, as "Brokeback Mountain" and "Memoirs of a Geisha" both posted spectacular bows. Focus' gay cowboy drama scored the highest per-screen average of any pic this year. "Brokeback," which was named best picture by the L.A. Film Critics Assn. over the weekend, made an astounding $544,549 on five plays in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, for an average of $108,910.

John Hinderaker over at Powerline has copies of a letter to Ronnie Earle, and one of two motions to quash the two new indictments of Tom Delay. http://www.powerlineblog.com/ "Earlier today, Tom DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, moved for dismissal of the second indictment which was procured by prosecutor Ronnie Earle. Here is DeGuerin's letter to Earle that accompanied the motion: "The judge who will hear DeLay's motions is a MoveOn.org supporter. But Ronnie Earle will have to come up with some answers if he wants to keep his prosecution of Tom DeLay alive."

JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip — A truck filled with masked militants and homemade weapons exploded at a Hamas (search) rally Friday, killing at least 15 Palestinians and wounding 80 — including children — bringing a grisly and terrifying end to one of the last gatherings by armed groups celebrating Israel's Gaza (search) pullout.

No group of Americans would be affected more by President Bush (news - web sites)'s Social Security (news - web sites) plan than those earning the least. Just ask 46-year-old Brent Allen. Allen, who recently lost his job at a Massachusetts paper mill, faces a retirement financed exclusively by the money he has been paying into the Social Security system for the better part of 30 years. Like nearly half the U.S. population, he has no pension or savings to speak of. And his brief flirtations with the stock market have largely flopped. So Allen, who lives on less than...